SpaceX has confidentially filed for what could be the largest IPO in history, with Starlink’s booming satellite business making the case for a cumulative $2 trillion valuation
In sum — what to know:
SpaceX’s IPO moment: According to reports, SpaceX has confidentially filed for an IPO, seeking to raise between $50 billion and $75 billion. Analysts expect it to be the biggest IPO ever.
Starlink, the growth engine: ”Starlink is the only reason this valuation is defensible,” said Futurum Equities’ Shay Boloor to Reuters.
Customer wins worldwide: An Opensignal report outlines three reasons why Starlink is gaining new customers in key markets.
Last week, SpaceX confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public offering (IPO), in what is expected to be the largest IPO to date. While the size of the offering is currently undisclosed, the New York Times reported citing a source that owner, Elon Musk, is looking to raise between $50 billion and $75 billion — putting the cumulative potential valuation of the rocket company, xAI (it’s struggling AI business which it merged with in February), and Starlink at $2 trillion, up from an earlier valuation of $1.75 trillion.
The paperwork was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and is currently awaiting feedback from regulators. According to sources, Musk is looking at a June debut.
Analysts anticipate the IPO could not only boost Musk’s space ambition, but also provide a massive lift to the entire space industry overall, as shares of AST SpaceMobile, Rocket Lab, and several other companies surged over 10% on the news.
Some are likening the event to the moment Netscape — the web browser from the mid-1990s — went public. “We think this is a Netscape moment for the space economy, in the same way that prior to Netscape going public in ’95, the internet was this thing that academics and government employees used — it became an institutional-grade asset class after that,” Chad Anderson, founder and CEO of Space Capital, told Yahoo Finance.
SpaceX’s lucrative valuation is fueled largely by the highly profitable satellite communications business of Starlink, which accounts for a majority of its revenue. Shay Boloor, chief market strategist at Futurum Equities, told Reuters, “Starlink is the only reason this valuation is defensible…This is going to be the recurring revenue engine.”
With over 10 million subscribers globally, and now on track to deliver service to 476, 000 U.S. locations via the Broadband Equity, Access & Deployment (BEAD) program, Starlink today accounts for 50% to 80% of SpaceX’s total revenue.
An Opensignal report outlines Starlink’s growth in the last year, especially in rural areas, where it is emerging as a formidable challenger to internet service providers (ISPs) that formerly held regional monopolies. According to the research, Starlink is gaining ground by wide margins in rural Australia, where in the last year, every one out of five households has switched to Starlink. A similar wave of growth was seen in Canada.
This shines light on some of Starlink’s numbers from 2025. Over the course of the year, Starlink doubled its customer base, adding nearly 20,000 new users daily between November and December.
A key advantage for Starlink is cheaper subscription cost. In the U.K., it is cheaper than even the lowest-priced plans offered by British Telecom. Adding to that, Opensignal observed that free kit rentals and reduced hardware costs have driven substantial customer gains across North America, Europe, and Oceania.
Another reason is improved Reliability Experience score or the measure of users’ experience of network consistency and stability. According to Opensignal data, Starlink’s score moved up 30% in Canada and 25% in the U.K. — a likely result of the recent hardware upgrade with the V2 satellites which have four times greater capacity than V1.
Furthermore, the company is set to disrupt the wireless industry more deeply with the new Starlink Mobile, which it positions as “complementary”, rather than competitive to terrestrial networks. After launching the complementary emergency direct-to-cell (D2C) texting service with T-Mobile last year, the operator seems ready to be a direct D2D provider in its own right, although there’s speculation whether it has enough spectrum to do so or will require to pair with an mobile virtual network operator (MVNO).
Coming back to SpaceX, the launch business too is thriving. The company reported $8 billion profit in 2025, up 51% from the year before, fueled in parts by government contracts. Regardless, Musk expects a vast majority of its revenue to still come from Starlink in 2026.
Meanwhile, stoking the IPO speculation, Elon Musk has put a new demand on the table. The NYT reported that banks, law firms, auditors, and advisors working on the IPO will now be required to sign up for Grok, Musk’s AI chatbot, now part of SpaceX. Reportedly, some banks have already begun the integrating work.
